I was just reading another article about how social media may be changing the world in a negative way, and upon thinking about it I had an interesting rebuttal. Now to start off, I’m sure there’s PLENTY of little nitpicky things that people can say about my opinion that I’m about to post, and that’s why I’m going to remind you right up front that it’s an opinion and nothing more. My blog entries are going to be largely to get rants out of my head, but not so much for inviting arguments or even necessarily a long discussion. I find that I’m not really up for those as much these days, but that’s a story for another time.
So I read through an article entitled “Is Social Media Turning Us into Psychopaths?” (http://www.whoishostingthis.com/blog/2013/06/03/social-media-psychopaths/) and the overall tone was very negative. The entire infographic was somewhat senseless, and I’ll go through my responses to each part in turn.
The first part was about lying, and in addition to the more general logic failure of not comparing it TO anything (such as frequency of lies in day-to-day life), the most senseless part was statistics for people who lied about things on their Facebook accounts. It doesn’t take a genius, or even more than a couple minutes of searching to notice that Facebook has plenty of people who are only there for games, socializing or even trolling. Many people don’t WANT to give out their real life information, and don’t if they can at all help it. It’s been over five years since the last time I had accurate, current job information on my own account. I have a second account that was made for the sole purpose of commenting on something a couple years ago without having to use my real name. Just because people are lying about their account information or jobs or holidays doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s easily just as likely to mean that they just don’t trust Facebook because of their well-documented invasions of privacy over the past several years.
The “disconnection” section is also a tough one to swallow- unless you consider for a brief moment the likely implications of the answers. The people who missed an important event because they were trying to share it? How many of them, I wonder, would make the same mistake again now? How is it any different from the time my father missed 15 minutes of my school play trying to change a camcorder battery back in 1993? The people checking social networks at dinner has no differentiation between those who are at a fancy restaurant or a fast food joint on lunch break, nor between people sitting down to a family dinner versus eating at their computer in their bachelor pad. I could say I check social networks during dinner about 90% of the time, and it sounds bad until I add the details that I’m unemployed, living with just one roommate, and we normally eat at our own computers because we socialize with one another plenty outside of meals. At that point, it’s no different than sitting down in front of the TV to eat- which I’m certain more people do than those who check social media, and watching TV generally involves a whole lot less social interaction. Don’t even get me started on how some people spend more time socializing online than in real life. Show me first what those people do for a job, prove that they realistically could even afford to meet up with people in person or that the time they spend on social media is in any way decreasing the time they have to spend with people in real life, and give some statistics on how much actual time they’re spending socializing and maybe things will look more interesting. But that’s sensationalism for you.
The “egocentricity” bit served very little meaning to me in general. There are far too many downfalls in all of those surveys. I sincerely doubt googling one’s own name happens nearly as often as suggested, and I have to wonder if part of the reason may be because of the survey putting the idea in people’s heads in the first place. I know for a fact that LinkedIn bothers people constantly about updating and renewing their profile, so I suspect the frequency of people changing their profile pictures has a lot to do with the success of their marketing. The number of self-portraits on instagram and the part about informing others of their own experiences merely boils down to.. guess what? That people are using social media outlets for what they’re advertised to do. Once again, a completely senseless logic failure combined with a complete lack of supporting data that might actually compare these numbers to any sort of status quo.
The “poor behavioral controls” part is what really bothers me, though. Cyber bullying is becoming a thing, sure, but it’s the internet. There are always trolls and mean-spirited people, and more to the point no one seems to want to take into account the correlation between increased reports of bullying and the fact that teachers and administrators are finally being held responsible for controlling bullying in a way that they never were when many of us were still in school. Confrontational behavior online is common and a lot easier for most people than doing it in person, and I’m surprised that anyone considers that’s really news.
If 51% of people really think that social media hasn’t improved their life, then count me a proud part of the 49%. Social media has helped me make friends, brought me together with my current roommate, has helped me keep many of the long-distance friendships I have alive, contributed to most if not all of my romantic relationships, and has kept me from being truly bored for years now. If anything, I lie less because I have people in my life who I can be honest with, without being shunned for not being part of the crowd. I have social interaction at times when I can’t afford to drive an hour to see someone, or it’s midnight and few friends would even be up much less accepting visitors. Perhaps this entire post is a bit egocentric… but it’s a blog, and that’s what they’re there for. They allow people to express opinions and ideas and thoughts and whatever else, and to allow other people to read on their own time, much like Twitter and Facebook allow a person to read what their friends are up to on their own time.
I think in many ways one of the effects social media has had when it comes to bullying is that it shows those who are bullied that it’s not necessarily normal behavior. Having friends online who are nice and normal and don’t care about pointless things like your looks or whether you watch the same popular sitcom that they do could mean that perhaps some kids are just realizing they don’t have to settle for superficial jerks as “friends”. I spent years trying to fit in among my own classmates in grade school, before discovering that it was never truly going to work and starting to avoid people. It wasn’t until I joined a community online myself that I discovered how there really were people out there who would accept me as a person for who I was, without needing to pretend to like what they liked. Perhaps a challenge to the status quo is exactly what was called for in order to get people to realize exactly how much bullying really goes on in schools. Maybe some of these bullies are the people who feel threatened by people abandoning them once they realize they don’t have to be “cool” to be accepted. I can’t offer any useless statistical data to back up any of my theories, of course.
But isn’t the very point that statistical data is useless?
Kortir 